The symbiosis of wings and the widescreen

Hollywood has long had a complicated relationship with aviation, but the bond has been, on the whole, mutually beneficial

- MARY MCNAMARA CULTURE CRITIC

Los Angeles Times
GLENDALE'S Grand Central Air Terminal, shown around 1940, was featured in the 1934 Shirley Temple film "Bright Eyes."

Everyone knows the song “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” Shirley Temple’s signature tune has become a cultural touchstone, showing up in the history of the Chicago mob (it was the nickname of the Cicero crew) and, of course, “The Simpsons.”

But if you haven't seen the 1934 film “Bright Eyes,” you might not know that the ship in question is an airplane or that this hymn to air travel was originally sung as Temple’s character taxied around one of Los Angeles’ first commercial airports, Glendale’s Grand Central Air Terminal.

Which you can still see if you take “a sweet trip,” not to the candy shop but along Grand Central Avenue, where it cleaves through Disney's Grand Central Creative Campus.

Completed in 1929 and restored by Disney in 2014, the beautiful Spanish Revival and Art Deco building is all that remains of the airport.

Here Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh began their record-breaking first regular L.A. to New York airline flight (a mere 50 hours!) and aviator Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly solo from the East Coast to the West. Here countless celebrities and industry titans alighted as they came, or returned, to L.A. The airport was also the site of scenes from many other early films, including 1930's “Hell's Angels,” produced by Howard Hughes, and 1933's “Lady Killer,” starring James Cagney.

Photo from Marc Wanamaker
SILENT FILM ACTOR Alice White sports a planeshaped hat as part of a Warner Bros. promotion in 1930.

It was not, however, the setting for the famous airport scene in “Casablanca” — by best accounts, that was Van Nuys Airport.